Chicken Stew
Preparation time : 45 mins | Serves 6 persons

Chicken stew or “shorba” is one of the common foods in South Asian cuisine and prepared in less time as compare to beef stew. It has more nutrition than beef and when given to patients who are feeling week, it helps to recover strength. It is a healthy meal. Remember when cooking chicken stew for patients, lower the amount of spices in this recipe.

Ingredients:
1 kg chicken
4 medium size onions
1 tbspn ginger paste
2 tbspn garlic paste
3-4 cloves
3 green cardamom
1 black cardamom
3 cinnamon sticks
1 tbspn red chili powder
1/2 tspn turmeric powder
1 tspn coriander powder
1 tspn mix spices powder
1/2 tspn nutmeg and mace powder
1/4 cup fried onions
Salt to taste
1/2 cup oil
Water as required

Procedure:
1. Boil onions in one cup of water, it takes hardly 10 minutes. Mash the boiled onions in blender to make smooth paste.
2. In a pan, fry cloves, cardamoms and cinnamon sticks.
3. Add ginger garlic paste, onion paste, red chili powder, turmeric powder and salt in the oil. Stir continuously the spices mixture and cook on medium flame until oil starts to separate from the spices paste.
4. After all the spices cook well, add chicken pieces and stir using wooden spoon. Cover the pan so that chicken starts to cook in its water.
5. When water starts to reduce and oil starts to release from the gravy, remove the cover from the pan and cook on slightly high flame so that all water has been dried.
6. Now add 3-4 cups of water in the gravy and cook on high flame until it starts to boil. After that reduce the flame to low and cover the pan so that chicken will become tender.
7. When chicken has been cooked, add mix spices powder, coriander powder, nutmeg and mace powder and crushed fried onions. Again cover the pan and let it cook for 5 minutes on slow heat so that aroma of these spices mixes in the stew evenly

Serving:
Delicious chicken stew is ready to serve with out traditional bread called chapati. You can also serve it with boil rice.